bokeh

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From Japanese暈け ‎(boke, “blur”), the nominalized form of the verb 暈ける ‎(bokeru, “to blur (intransitive)”).

The terminal -h (by comparison with the romanization boke) is a pronunciation guide, so that it is not pronounced as /boʊk/ as it would be under standard English orthography. Contrast karate, karaoke, which have undergone sound change.

Used since at least 1996,[1] with spelling bokeh popularized by editor Mike Johnston in the March/April 1997 issue of Photo Techniques magazine, which featured three commissioned articles on the topic, Johnston writing:

“it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable”.[2]